AIB New Policy on Returning Cheques...

HellFireClub

A mate of mine called me today and told me that he threw a wobbler down in his branch after he discovered that they (AIB bank), were returning cheques he had given suppliers, because even though he had sufficient funds in his account, that because a small component of these total funds in his account were "uncleared" funds, the bank made a decision this week to dishonour the cheque that was being presented against these funds, some of which hadn't cleared into his account.

I thought that this wasn't how it was meant to work, that basically the bank could not make a premature decision with regard to whether a cheque that you had lodged into your account would fail to clear.

I don't have a chequebook these days, as all payments into my account are done electronically and the same for the payment of creditors from my account, but last time I would have been lodging cheques into my account and writing cheques, which was some years ago, the banks may have delayed honouring a cheque I had written out of my account, until the funds in my account had completely cleared, but the last thing that would have happened would have been that a cheque I had written to a creditor would have been returned unpaid because even though I had funds in my account, that some of those funds in my account, were still waiting to clear.

If the banks are now returning cheques on this basis, I think this is pretty unbelievable. I fully accept that a cheque written from your account would not clear until you had cleared funds in your account, but returning a cheque on the wrongly assumed notion that some uncleared funds in your account would bounce and ultimately not be honoured, I think that is just plain wrong by a bank, and it's definitely what happened a friend of mine over the last few days.

Just wondering has anyone else heard of this new banking policy?

AstonMartin

Will lose a lot of business customers if true

RUDOLF289

I primarily use Internet banking but would lodge cheques to my AIB account. Upto yesterday (!) they would allow me to draw against uncleared funds. It may depend on the relationship and the quality of the account?